ALL THE BEAUTY THEY POSSESS INSIDE

“I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.”

-      Greatest Love of All" by Michael Masser and Linda Creed

These lyrics, made popular by Whitney Houston, were actually written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed and originally recorded by George Benson for the 1977 Muhammad Ali biopic The Greatest. The song was released in February 1985 by Whitney Houston under the title "Greatest Love of All," reaching the top of the Billboard charts then and again after her death in 2012.

Nearly four decades have passed and the lyrics can still inform our culture.  The message is clear – see a child, love a child, prepare a child, and through that child recall the sweetness that life showers on the young.  Yet Creed actually wrote the lyrics in the midst of her struggle with breast cancer. Her intent was to describe her adult feelings about coping with great challenges, being strong during those challenges whether you succeed or fail, and passing that strength on to children to carry with them into their adult lives.

As a TV special this week memorializing the life of Whitney Houston fills our family rooms with these lyrics yet again, the children of 38 years ago (now adults and often parents), and the adults of 38 years ago (now senior adults and often grandparents) will recollect and sing along with this musical hit from their past.  How will their experiential and anecdotal personal narratives, formed in that 38 year interim, meld with the implied concept  that life showers sweetness on the young?  Doubtless many of the social, political and economic issues that exist today existed in the 1970s, but the world has changed in both the macro- and micro- sense. On a global scale, we are all so much more interconnected, and so much more information is available to us about our planet, its citizens, and their lives.  And in a personal sense, that world affects how we live our lives, informs our dreams and aspirations, and feeds our personal circumstance.   

I think of those who teach, guide, care for, and minister to our children today.  Whom do they see when they look into the faces of the children in their care?  I imagine their view, rounded out by personal information as to the child’s living arrangements, personal challenges, and emotional strains, can only be respected as more correct than ours.  When we attend a youth concert or car wash, a race or a recital, a play or a play date, we might see only the expected exuberance and energy, and when a glimpse of unexpected behavior pops in, we might react with judgment, expecting suitable reprimand.

In speaking with institutional leaders who face such adult expectations, I conclude that we are projecting who we want our youth to be, and what we want them to do, without knowing what brings them to where they are. Recently a friend who directs a children’s chorale shared with me that volunteer adults assisting with the group can sometimes demand that she discipline or even reject children whose behavior does not meet a standard of the volunteer’s choosing.  My friend sees both sides of the issue, but her reaction to any child’s behavior is first to minister with love and outreach, as such ministering is often missing in the home.

Let’s look to the lyrics, again…

“I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way.”

Because the future absolutely belongs to our children, they will lead the way, whether we teach them or not.  It’s what we teach them that matters.  And if all the teaching that might be done at home is not being done there, or if family issues or social betrayals have erased positive words taught and replaced them with indelible negative experiences… on whose shoulders does the re-teaching fall?  I believe it falls to the teachers, the ministers, the counselors, the caregivers, the guides whose maps and lesson plans must be flexible rather than fixed if they are to make a difference.

  
“Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier.”

When a father and mother find joy in balancing a child’s life with fun and challenges and the ability to face victory or defeat with equal confidence, that child will no doubt learn all about real beauty and pride.  Yet how many of the children in the care of our heroic ministers, teachers and guides experience such a joy-filled two-parent family life?  Many parents never experienced such a life themselves and thus have no paradigm to follow; many struggle economically, emotionally, or spiritually themselves and therefore find more obligation than joy in raising their children; and sadly, many abandon their responsibilities and relinquish their child’s care to others (with outcomes ranging from wonderful to tragic).  Whose joy will replace that which we would have expected to come from that child’s home? That of the teacher, caregiver, minister, or guide.

“Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.”

Given the scenarios above, how many adults raising today’s children hear laughter and are not reminded of how they used to be… in fact how many succumb to the very human instincts of envy and resentment when they hear the laughter and are reminded of its lack in their own upbringing?  The potential damage to children in the care of adults for whom laughter and joy are neither familiar nor desirable can be deep-seated and even irreparable if not diagnosed and offset.  And once again, it is often the guide, the caregiver, the teacher or the minister, thanks to acute and well-honed skills, who detects such situations and addresses them.

Each of us might do well to adjust our personal lens – the one through which we see our children.  The next time we are in the presence of a child whose 

behavior does not seem to conform to the group setting, perhaps we might see that child through the lens of understanding and forgiveness, in the perfect knowledge that we do not have perfect knowledge about the settings and circumstances surrounding the child’s life.  And the next time that we are in the presence of a person in whose care we place our children, we might do well to see him or her through that adjusted lens as well… with respect and gratitude, and always with the benefit of the doubt that his/her decisions, reactions, and leadership are based on the greater good of the group, as well as the intensely personal story, known only to him or her, that each child presents.

My fervent wish is for us to empower each child we love, indeed every child on the planet, with the tools and gifts to come to know, to use, to depend upon, all the beauty they possess inside.  Let us look to the teachers of those tools and the givers of those gifts with the support and love they so richly deserve.